Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council got a great turnout at their polls last weekend! Check out their fun election promo video and creative Election Day activity ideas for inspiration for making your own Election Day an event that draws your community closer together.

Election promo video

Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council’s “Eagle Rock the Vote!” video gives a playful and engaging overview of their Council’s Election Day details and also introduces viewers to some of the local people and places that the Council had worked with in the past. Even if you’ve never been to Eagle Rock, the video give you a good feel for what that community – and the local Neighborhood Council – is all about.

You can also make a video promoting your own Council’s elections that showcases the personalities and places which give your community and your Neighborhood Council their unique character. You can take this idea one step further and make a video or videos of this kind any time, even after your elections are over, as videos like this are always an excellent tool to promote the work your Council does, and engage your stakeholders.

While the format of Eagle Rock’s video is nice, your videos don’t have to follow the same format or visual style in order to connect successfully with your stakeholders. Simple videos shot on a smartphone have a personal, immediate quality that can be very winning – see this article on Canoga Park Neighborhood Council’s very effective “Bus Bench” video series they shot for their recent elections.

Election Day activities

Another way that Eagle Rock turned their Election Day into a community-building event was with activities like the “Make an Eagle Rock” craft table that Council treasurer Miry Whitehill put together. Kids and the young-at-heart were given craft supplies like small model Bald Eagles and rocks to assemble their own personal “Eagle Rock” souvenir to take home.

There are many ways you can adapt the idea of Election Day keepsakes to use for your own Council. While crafting is fun, there are plenty of other ways to generate inexpensive and easy to share election mementos. For example, you could set up a photo booth with your Neighborhood Council’s banner as a backdrop, and even provide a few costumes or props with local flavor. The photos can be emailed to those posing for them – which builds your Council’s email list – and can also be posted (with permission from those in the photos) to your Council’s social media accounts or website. To keep costs low, you can assign a Board Member or Election Day volunteer to take the photos on a cell phone with a decent camera, rather than hiring a potentially expensive professional photo booth operator to do the job.